Basically, I do alot of stupid things. I make alot of bad choices that end up backfiring - in general, the safe thing to do is take what I say and do the exact opposite. This is the first in what will probably be a series of articles highlighting some of my more memorable decisions. This one relates to gaming and my history with halo.

Okay so I’ve written an article on my introduction to halo, and how deeply involved I got into it. Well once again, there will be future articles on this - but what I wanted to say here is that eventually I found myself on a national gaming circuit called Major League Gaming. The format was one 4 man team plays another, and my team (STK) rose to the top of the heap.

Major League Gaming took  a grass roots underground hobby, and was in the process of becoming mainstream. They had deals in the works with television, ads all over the internet and a website with thousands of active users….so the company was booming and so was our team. And once again - we were the best. It was funny, in a weird way you were like a mini-celebrity. At the events kids you’d never seen before came up to you asking “are you the real strangepurple”, or how do you do certain things…sometimes even for autographs.

I was on a team with what would become the most legendary players on the circuit - the Ogres. Two ridiculous twins from Ohio who basically dominated for years after this story takes place. They were the hottest thing in halo at the time, every single person idolized them, wanted to team with them because they could virtually carry the other 2 team members to the top. Luckily at the moment - this was me.

So we keep on winning and things are going great….then comes MLG Chicago. After spending a week before the event over in Ohio playing with them and some friends (and getting totally demoralized by a certain SOMEONE dominating me the entire time), I was in no shape for Chicago. As you may expect, I put on a horrendous performance and we lost our first event.  Of course, if you look at it realistically it wasn’t ALL my fault, but that’s how I took it.

Dejected and embarrassed, I told the twins this would be my last tournament with them. They asked me to stay and not worry about one mess up, but I was sold on the idea that I couldn’t hack it anymore.  So I quit the team….I eventually joined up with some other groups of guys and we usually performed great, but I was not in the spotlight anymore like I was with the twins.

Now back to why this was a Dug Decision…..As I said, MLG was blowing up. Events kept getting bigger and more professional, new sponsors were rolling in and the money was growing. I don’t remember exactly the time frame, but not long after I had left the team….the prize money literally tripled, the twins got $250,000 sponsorship contracts just for showing up and placing well at the events, the fanbase grew so much so that it became ridiculous, and they continued on in ways that we could only have imaged a few months before.

I’m in no way unhappy or bitter about any of this, actually I think it’s pretty funny. But now here I am, writing this blog - while they are still top tier players with a consistent team, own multiple properties, hundreds of thousands of dollars and spend time traveling around the country hanging out with celebrities!!!

THIS is a Dug Decision …. and there are plenty more of them